1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of customer billing software, and in particular, to an architecture and method for compiling customer billing information from multiple billing systems and service regions, for presenting consolidated views of the revenue derived from customers, and for creating and monitoring terms and conditions based on customer billing relationships illustrated in the consolidated views.
2. Background of the Invention
Before 1984, the Bell telephone system consisted of 22 local Bell telephone companies that were owned by American Telephone and Telegraph (ATandT). ATandT and the local Bell companies sold local, domestic U.S., and international long distance services, as well as customer premises telephone hardware. Customers had one point of contact for all of their telecommunications requirements and ATandT effectively held a monopoly on all telephone services. To meet the accounting needs of this monopoly during this period, ATandT developed billing information technologies and applications that tracked telephone service usage and billing records. These early software and database technologies were relatively primitive and did not allow for the complete integration of billing information across different types of customer accounts, customer operating units (e.g., consumer or small business), and geographic locations (e.g., regional accounting offices). Today, these early billing technologies are referred to as legacy technologies.
In 1984, the United States government ordered the divestiture of ATandT, requiring ATandT to transfer ownership of the 22 local phone companies to seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs). The seven RBOCs retained the xe2x80x9cBellxe2x80x9d logo and the right to sell local and toll calling within local areas. Further, the RBOCs continued to use the legacy technologies to administer customer accounts and track billing activities within their individual regions. During this period, because minimal competition existed within the regions of the RBOCs, the RBOCs held monopolies within their individual regions, giving them little incentive to pursue customers by analyzing customer value across the region and developing targeted marketing programs. Essentially, RBOCs had guaranteed customers who would use the RBOC regardless of discounting or other promotional programs.
However, in 1996, the United States Congress enacted the Telecommunications Act of 1996, opening the Bell territories to competition from long distance vendors, cable companies, local access providers, utility companies, and other RBOCs. As a result, telecommunications service providers (collectively, xe2x80x9cTelcosxe2x80x9d) could compete in each other""s markets and develop and market new products and services for a wider customer base. Thus, for the first time, RBOCs found it necessary to understand and analyze customer accounts and billing activity within the different RBOC regions and the different legacy systems. Armed with this information, RBOCs could develop customer-specific discount programs and promotions based on the revenue derived from that particular customer. With increased competition, the RBOCs needed to analyze customer value and offer discount programs that encouraged customer use while maximizing RBOC profit.
To analyze customer value within a service region, RBOCs must consolidate revenue information across the xe2x80x9cartificial boundariesxe2x80x9d in a RBOC region. These artificial boundaries are defined by the original legacy systems developed by ATandT, the customer operations units (COUs) established by the RBOC to handle specific customer types, and the regional accounting offices (RAOs) within the RBOC region formed to distribute the administrative and accounting functions of the RBOC. Each of these entities maintains information on customers in separate databases. Thus, when a customer falls under more than one customer type and/or within more than one artificial boundary, that customer""s billing information is strewn across several individual databases. Therefore, to completely understand a customer""s value to the Telco within the overall region, the information must be consolidated and summarized.
In analyzing customer revenue, the two principal legacy systems are the Customer Records Information System (CRIS) and the Carrier Access Billing System (CABS). CRIS maintains billing records for all retail RBOC telephone customers, including residential and business customers. CRIS produces billing records for each telephone line connected to the network. Typically, the Telco sends a billing statement to the retail customers, or xe2x80x9cend-users,xe2x80x9d on a monthly basis.
CABS maintains billing records for wholesale customers who purchase large blocks of telephone capacity from the RBOCs, usually at rates discounted from retail prices. Typical wholesale customers include large corporate clients or blocks of consumers seeking lower rates through high volume usage of the system as well as businesses that purchase telephone capacity for resale to individual consumers.
ATandT developed CRIS and CABS legacy systems as independent applications, without means for integrating and summarizing the information they contain. Thus, to understand a customer""s potential value, Telcos must consult several different billing systems, analyze the data, and assemble a summary view of the customer""s billing activity and revenue. Therefore, to establish discount plans for individual customers covered by multiple billing systems and service regions, Telcos must endure a tedious, manual process. The first step in this process is to gather the revenue data from the multiple billing systems and service regions that service the customer . In addition to the two billing systems, CRIS and CABS, the process requires consulting multiple COUs and pulling data from the various RAOs operating in each service region. With the data gathered, the next step requires business analysts to compile the information and present it in a way that conveys the overall profits derived from the customer. Guided by this profit summary, the next step requires business managers and marketing analysts to develop a discount plan that increases the customer""s use of telephone services and maximizes profit. Finally, with a discount plan outlined, the final step is to build a software program in machine code that executes the desired discounts.
As would be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art, this process could last well over a year, especially when factoring in the administrative steps of submitting work requests, prioritizing the customer needs associated with the work requests, procuring development funds, assigning personnel to analyze customer revenue data, and writing, de-bugging, and deploying the software. In addition, the process only provides a single instance of a discount plan, making it necessary to repeat the exercise for each different plan and/or customer.
As used in this specification and the claims, the following terms have the meanings described below.
Customer Operating Unit (COU): business units or divisions of a Telco, formed to address the needs of specific customer types, e.g., consumer services, small business services, complex business systems, and interconnection services.
Regional Accounting Office (RAO): office within the RBOC region formed to distribute the administrative and accounting functions of the RBOC.
Other-Charges-and-Credits Transactions: fractional and/or one type charges or credits.
Package: the bundling of two or more Telco products or services for the purposes of discounting or other customer retention efforts.
COBOL: a software programming language generally used for business applications.
C++: a high-level programming language.
Sybase(trademark): a computer software application for storing, managing, and manipulating data in a relational database.
UNIX: a computer operating system for running data processing and telephone systems, which provides multi-tasking and multi-user capabilities.
Object Request Broker (ORB): an object-oriented system consisting of middleware that manages message traffic between application software and computer/software platforms.
The present invention is a computer network architecture that develops software applications to execute customer-specific billing programs. The present invention, referred to as a Customer Billing Relationships network architecture, summarizes information from multiple telephone billing systems across multiple telephone service regions and provides a Telco with a consolidated view of a customer""s telephone usage. By presenting billing activity and revenue totals, the consolidated view gives the Telco a comprehensive understanding of a particular customer""s value, enabling the Telco to formulate customer-specific billing plan terms, conditions, and discounts. Further, the present invention provides means to automatically implement customer-specific billing plans using a table update that requires no software code programming.
In addressing the needs of the prior art, the present invention replaces the prior art steps of manually gathering, compiling, and presenting, in customer billing relationships, billing information from multiple billing systems and service regions. The other tedious steps of the prior art method, involving, among other things, developing (calculating) a discount plan or product package, and implementing that package by building a software program in machine code that executes the discounts or package, are addressed in a concurrently filed patent application entitled xe2x80x9cProduct Packaging Softwarexe2x80x9d by Joseph Brent Rome, Raymonda J. Parris, and Susan S. O""Bryan, filed Oct. 15, 1999 (application Ser. No. 09/418,828), which is hereby incorporated by reference.
In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, the network architecture accesses the two legacy billing systems, CRIS and CABS, to create a consolidated view of a particular customer billing relationship. The billing relationship represents a particular customer""s account activity across multiple customer operations units and revenue accounting offices. Customer operations units are the individual business units that serve particular types of customers, e.g., consumer services, small business services, complex business systems, and interconnection services. Revenue accounting offices run the legacy systems, providing the customer data stored in the billing systems. The customer billing relationship gives the telephone service provider a comprehensive understanding of the value of a customer. With this understanding, the telephone service provider can tailor discount programs that meet the specific needs of a customer and encourage continued business at increasing usage volumes.
Specifically, the customer billing relationship provides a consolidated view of an account structure, grouping together accounts that are logically one customer (e.g., an affinity group or parent/child relationship), relating customers to other customers, and providing unique customer-based information that cannot be obtained using only the CRIS or the CABS account structures. With these individualized consolidated views, Telcos can formulate flexible terms and conditions for each customer, addressing specific terms such as commitment levels, business actions (rewards or penalties), termination liability, and volume discounts based on meeting a specified total revenue threshold for a given time period. The Telcos can apply different terms and conditions to different customers and to the specific products and services of each customer.
Once a Telco has analyzed the customer billing relationship and formulated a customer-specific billing plan, the present invention quickly and easily executes the plan. Instead of the time-consuming process of manual software coding (xe2x80x9chard codingxe2x80x9d) known in the prior art, the network architecture of the present invention quickly generates discounts plans and automatically applies them to customer accounts. To automatically apply the billing plans, the customer billing relationship pulls information from the legacy systems, calculates charges or credits dictated by the discount plan, and sends totals back to the legacy system for inclusion in the customer billing statement.
In addition to creating and implementing customer-specific billing plans based on a consolidated view, the preferred embodiment of the present invention also supports extensive reporting capabilities and means for correcting accounts. The reporting capabilities provide detailed summaries describing billing information such as the total amount of rewards a customer has received, the specific accounts receiving such rewards, and the amount of revenue collected from a particular customer. In providing a means for correcting accounts, the present invention allows Telcos to adjust rewards that were applied to the account but for which the customer""s billing activity did not qualify. Through GUIs, a Telco can enter corrections or adjustments into the customer billing relationship, which are then calculated and applied to the legacy systems.
Thus, the present invention supplants the time consuming process of the prior art by quickly compiling customer revenue data from multiple billing systems and regions, presenting the data in consolidated views of customer billing relationships, and automatically implementing customer-specific billing programs without requiring the xe2x80x9chard codingxe2x80x9d of software. In addition, the present invention provides means for producing reports that assist in monitoring the success of the billing programs, and means for correcting discounts or penalties erroneously applied to a customer account.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a Telco with a consolidated view of a customer""s account summarizing information from multiple billing systems and multiple telephone service regions.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a Telco with the information necessary to create and update customer-specific terms and conditions and to provide means to accomplish such creating and updating.
It is another object of the present invention to allocate and apply rewards and penalties to specific customer accounts.
It is another object of the present invention to generate standard and on-demand reports on terms and conditions.
These and other objects of the present invention are described in greater detail in the detailed description of the invention, the appended drawings, and the attached claims.